If you don't like to bargain or even spend a lot of time doing research, you can still save hundreds on your next car purchase with two simple steps, a recent study of more than 1,400 car buyers shows.

The paper, co-authored by Jorge Silva-Risso, an associate professor of marketing at the University of California, Riverside's School of Business Administration, says that consumers who were armed with information about what a dealer pays for a car and who visited two dealerships saved an average of $230. They didn't have to do a lot of research, nor did they say they liked to bargain.

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If you do like to bargain, however, and can put in the time to do more research and price comparisons, you can save much more—an average of $800 on your car purchase, according to the survey.